How Does Fearlessly Sharing Your Fears Empower You? Presentation Review 15: Eimer Holmes

Do you struggle with fear, doubt and worry in your public speaking? Do you find it difficult to connect with your audience and deliver presentations that leave a lasting, positive, unforgettable impact? If yes, then let's dive in the world of public speaking and presentation skills with your host, Eric Edmead. Welcome to the Unforgettable podcast with guest host David Wood.

I am am your host, Eric Edmeads and I'm here with my co host David T.S. wood and we are doing another presentation review where we take a look at somebody's talk and kind of discuss what went really well and what we can all learn from it. In this case, we are going to visit with Emer and Emer is from Ireland and she is just a delightful storyteller. She uses some really great mechanisms that I think you're going to learn a lot from. I just have a little bit of a, you know, picture a little trauma warning here. She might talk about spiders. Oh, yeah.

Yes. She may cross a couple of lines with spiders.

So with that, with that warning in place, let's roll.

Again. Does anybody here have a fear of spiders? Yes. Me too. So I found myself in Nepal, traveling with a few friends, and we're staying in a Buddhist monastery. One of the rules in the monastery is that after dark, when the sun goes down, we can't be with the monks because we're female and they're male. So we have to go back to our room, which is a little shack outside of the monastery. So we get to the shack and we open the door, turn on the light, and I'm just about to go into the room when I see that there's a few spiders on the bed and there's another few just kind of on the floor and around my rucksack. I'm kind of going, oh, no, I don't like spiders. Now, they're not the black widow type of spiders that are in the grapes that Eric mentioned there the other day, but nonetheless, they're spiders. So anyway, I'm there and I'm looking in, I'm going try and get rid of a few of them. And then I look up at the wall and on the wall I see this really big dump patch. I'm thinking, that's strange because this is a really dry climate. Anyway, as I look at the dump patch, I think, ooh, it's moving, it's moving. Oh, my God. It's not a damp patch. It's a whole big circle of spiders and they're at least three or four deep. So straight away, I Run out of the room. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. I am not, absolutely not going to sleep in that room tonight. Not a hope. So anyway, I'm freaking out. The other girls are kind of the same, and one of them decides she's going to go and get the monks. So she runs off to the. To the monastery to tell the monks all about this emergency in the room. A few minutes later, she comes running back and four monks behind her. And they're all running to see what the big issue is. And as. As they look into the room, they all burst out laughing. Ha ha, ha, ha ha. They can barely speak, they're laughing so much. And I can't figure this out. And I'm like, you know, what are you laughing at? And one of them, who speaks a fair bit of English, turns around and he says, but they're not poisonous. And I'm going, yeah, I know they're not poisonous, but they're spiders. I don't care. I can't sleep with spiders. Not a hope. And they continue laughing. And he says again, nudging the other guys, but they're not poisonous. They're not poisonous. It's okay. And I'm going, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not going into that room. I'm definitely not going into that room. There are thousands of them in it. So anyway, the only thing I could think of was that I suggested that we get our sleeping bags and we sleep in the garden outside. So I say this to the monks, and I say, can we get our sleeping bags and sleep out here? It'll be safer. And the guy just looks at me incredulously, and he says, yeah, but what about the snakes? Snakes? Oh, no. Oh, spiders. Oh, snakes, spiders, snakes. So I'm kind of going, oh, no, what am I going to do? I have to make a choice here. So eventually I kind of decide, okay, the only thing we can do here is go into the room, because between snakes and spiders, I think snakes are the worst. So I get my sleeping bag and I shake it out as much as I can, hoping there are no spiders left in it. And then I get another blanket, and I shake the hell out of that as well, hoping there's no spiders in it. And then I don't take off any clothes, no shoes, no nothing. I get into my sleeping bag, pull it up to here and then lie on the bed, and I get the blanket and I put it over my head and start tucking it in underneath. And I'm like that. And I'm too afraid to move. And I'm like, oh, I can't breathe, I can't sleep, I can't move. I better not move. And I'm like that for a few hours and I'm like, oh, I can't move. If I move, they'll get in underneath. I can't move. I can't sleep. So I'm like that all night until the sun comes up and we can go outside again. So we get up and we go out and we're out for the day. And of course, all day I'm thinking about these bloody spiders and what we're going to do tonight. So I'm thinking, spider, spider, spider, spiders. Anyway, I'm so shattered that I had no sleep the previous night. By the time we get back to the room the second night, I'm thinking spiders, okay? So I hop into bed, I forget all about the spiders, and I just sleep because I'm so shattered. So in the morning, I wake up and I think, well, I didn't die. I'm still afraid of snakes, but I may have eaten a few spiders that night. But one thing it did do for me is that it cured my fear of spiders. Which goes to show, when you're afraid of something, the best thing is to put yourself right in the middle of it. And I did that also this week here in Speaker Nation, because last Monday, when I was asked, on a scale of 1 to 10, how confident do you speak, do you feel in speaking in public? And I said genuinely, with all my heart, zero. So I'm delighted to be here tonight. Thank you.

My cheeks are hurting from sp. I laughed, but I was smiling all the time. There's an engagement you have where I can feel it right here. And I kept looking over to see if other people were feeling the same thing. Even when you weren't being funny, there was a rich connection. And I was smiling. I was enjoying you. I was enjoying who you are as a person. And I was thinking, I bet she's incredibly kind. I bet she's just a lovely friend. And I love when again, when we bring ourselves to the stage, how we live life. And that's what you have. You have a magical quality about you that's just really inviting. And I love that word, inviting. Thank you.

Thank you, Emer. I think you triggered my spider fear as well, because your descriptions and your animations had me right there with you. Okay, that's not fair.

So, anyway.

Thanks for taking us on that ride with you.

I'm. I'm not sorry. I. I Will say, you know, we've got a lot of people watching online, and we had 14 PETA activists. They're not happy. They're not happy with the stomping on the spiders. Okay? That's problem number one. And secondly, they said that this video cannot be marked vegan because you were eating the spiders. That was so good. From the moment you walked on to the moment you were finished, you held this. Exactly invitation. Remember, I've said this before. If you are asking your audience to pay attention, you're asking too much. You should be creating attraction. And she created every step of the way, fun, engagement, and then again, a great message. It's so, so good. Well done. Congratulations.

Thank you. Thank you.

I love the way she tied that in. You know, she's talking about fear, and then she very authentically and honestly goes back to her feelings about public speaking from five days earlier. And I remember that. I remember when I was first talking to her and how. How constrained she felt about the whole thing. And so it was really interesting to see her discuss that whole process of fear. But one of the things I really liked about her is the deadpan. You know, she's just talking along like nothing special is going to happen, and then she just drops stuff, and it's. It's either a little jarring or a little bit funny. Very nice style.

Yeah. Yeah. I found that even when she wasn't being funny, that I was smiling. So my cheeks were aching by the end of the six minutes because she just had that. She really drew me in and I was. My eyes were smiling, my cheeks were smiling even when I wasn't laughing, which is incredible. Right.

You know, I think one of the ways that she really achieved that. You know, we talk a lot about use of the physical body and gesturing and stuff, but facial expressions. Facial expressions can be really, really important. And I think one of the things that. That she used very well was exactly that, kind of hinting that something's coming, you know, so deadpan, kind of in the delivery. But there's mirth, you know, there's. There's a little mirth or mystery or mischief behind her eyes that creates a sense of engagement and. And lets you. Gives you a sense of suspense. I think she handled that really well.

Yeah.

And I love the twist. Like you said, the twist at the end is, you know, spider, Spider, Spider. Actually, I'm terrified of the stage or was. Right.

Yeah. She did a great job. Again, an example of somebody taking a. What could be, frankly, a fairly mundane life experience. I mean, okay, for a lot of people. The spiders might not be mundane, but, you know, a fairly regular, normal, ish experience and using it as a metaphor to teach something much more powerful, I think that was really fantastic. So remember that. Remember that in the weeks ahead, in the months ahead, you will have things happen to you. And if you start to feel like you're having an emotional experience, either an up one or a down one, that probably means that you're in a story. And that story will have value to somebody. And I can't wait to hear it.

So that's it for today's episode of Unforgettable. Head on over to itunes or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week who posts a review on itunes will win a chance in the grand prize drawing to win a private $25,000 VIP day with Eric Edmidza himself. Be sure to head on over to unforgettable show and pick up a free copy of Eric's gift and join us on the next episode.